At the movies: The Last Station.

Oscar nominations do a lot to increase a film's profile, and it's on the strength of the acting (and the Academy Award nominations for it) that this film has catapulted itself into public awareness. This could just as easily have been a Movie of the Week or cable network effort, and as such it might have swept the Emmys.

But the reason why everyone is talking about this film is Helen Mirren. Always fun and sometimes quite genius, here she rules the screen like a queen, speaking sweetly, seducing her husband all over again, plotting, fixing problems, and tearfully crawling around on the ground like Patti LaBelle. It's a magnificent turn.

Celebrated author Leo Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer) in the early twentieth century had become the voice of a movement, one of thought, social action, and altruism. His beloved wife, the Countess Sofya (Helen Mirren, rightfully deserving of her Oscar nomination), finds herself at odds with her husband over his many acolytes and his plans to give away his copyrights to the people. Into their midst comes Valentin (James McAvoy, as always the go-to guy for classy/sexy British audience surrogates), initially working as a spy for Tolstoy's right hand man Chertkoff (Paul Giamatti, hissably vicious), but eventually finding things a bit more complicated after getting to know the Tolstoys a bit better.

Anyone coming to this film to learn about Tolstoy's ideologies in depth will be disappointed. The plot essentially distills down to intrigue and deception over copyright and celibacy, so thankfully the cast step in to amp up the drama to soap opera levels- which is a good thing. Mirren is pure gold here, and Plummer underplays nicely to contrast her. The two are believable as a longtime couple, and the supporting cast fulfills its duties efficiently. Even if the script weren't so firmly stacked in favor of Mirren's Sofya, she would have you won over by the end, anyway.

At the movies/extensive digression: Star Trek.

If this were a Summer Movie Preview, it would go something like this: When a spacetime incident launches a vengeance-seeking Romulan miner (for more on that story, see the prequel comic books, because the film barely devotes twenty seconds to its specifics) on a collision course with those who will one day be the crew of the Starship Enterprise, the ‘future’ as we have known it is in serious danger. But this isn’t a normal summer movie, really.

Here it is, the gathering of the first and most beloved Star Trek crew, but under different circumstances and in a fashion meant to restart a film series that had been led down the path of studio interference and disheartening developments (can anyone say Remans? It just made me want to buy a bottle of champagne for Diane Duane). And on that front, this new film, from the most objective place possible, is better than 7/8 of the Next Generation movies and all of Enterprise.

That people are even talking this much about Star Trek is a good thing. It’s a great thing, even, because that’s what Star Trek has always been about- dialogue, democracy, and grassroots movements. It started out as a little show on a big network with little budgets and big ideas, and the united force of its fanbase kept it alive, even during the decade after its cancellation, before 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Before the Internet, through letters and meetings and gatherings and the building blocks of friendships, Star Trek remained a vital and vibrant thing

To this date, Star Trek: The Next Generation remains the only television show ever to accept unsolicited scripts, and that little historical footnote is a beacon to those of us who grew up caring about the continued goings-on of the United Federation of Planets. Star Trek thrives on disparate voices coming together and settling their issues, expanding the universe and our own mental horizons as well.

Star Wars has always been George Lucas’ baby, and look where it got you. The Alien films had a righteous champion both in actress/producer/auteur Sigourney Weaver and in the character of Ellen Ripley, though the shameless opportunists behind Brandywine (its production company) let Fox run roughshod over them to create their heinous Alien vs Predator abortions. But Star Trek was kept alive by its fans, and the disdain that even otherwise respectful reviews of the new film have vented at the truly hardcore Trekkies is sorely misplaced. Someone that you know and love is a Trekkie.

Me? I knew my geek card was being called during the Kobayashi Maru sequence when I was intrigued that the Klingons were using the D-7 model ship. So yeah, I’m like that.

SciFi fans are an interesting bunch of people because not only do they have vivid imaginations, they also stay informed about issues; that combination makes a lot of people nervous. In the way that St. Patrick’s Day is amateur night for alcoholics and October is the month when people who’d never otherwise watch scary movies like to dabble in horror, people who enjoy SciFi year-round are viewed with suspicion.

But look at the landscape of contemporary television today… SciFi, Fantasy, and Horror are the influences behind the programming leading the charge against the Xerox proliferation of reality shows, and those genres (and Twin Peaks) help power Lost, Heroes, Pushing Daisies, and any other of a number of programs that understand the power of a good story.

Which makes it intriguing, because Lost co-creator/Mission: Impossible III director J.J. Abrams isn’t playing anything safe. Alienating hardcore Trek fans with the possibility of erasing forty-three years of fandom is arrogant and impetuous and radical, so the film makes a point of firmly describing itself as an alternate reality created by a spacetime incident. While aspects of these much-loved characters are the same, so much in this film’s universe is different or skewed that it becomes “Star Trek,” rather than Star Trek. So there’s still a currency-based system on Earth, Cardassian drinks are widely-known, and there are Orion women in Starfleet.

If none of those statements mean anything to you, you can skip the rest of this piece. Stuff blows up and there are lots of attractive people making a difference with special effects; check it out.

Nonfans have been ecstatic about this new film and what all it entails, the faithful a bit more skeptical (I, for one, feel there was no need for a Beastie Boys song, and while I love the idea of Tyler Perry’s cameo, its execution seems a tad jarring). I know people who won’t acknowledge anything that didn’t have Gene Roddenberry’s approval as ‘real’ Star Trek. I have a dear friend who refuses to see this new film because he claims it unmakes forty-three years worth of time and love. And there are people who feel betrayed by what’s been done to Star Trek across the board since the film series began. And I respect all of those perspectives for two main reasons:

1) I was raised to believe that when you listen to what other people have to say, you learn things.
2) I was taught at a very early age by Star Trek that diversity and openness was the key to progressing.

So there’s a remarkable span of opinion on the subject. It’s such a wide range of people and ideas and expectations that it could be nearly impossible to speak to all of them. But like our old buddy V’Ger, I want to hear what all is said, and I want to know all that I can know. Kubrick’s monolith could never be a symbol of Trek’s perspective on human social and spiritual evolution, because nothing about Trek is monolithic.

Getting the facility for social themes and goofy hand-to-hand combat of the original series exactly right, Abrams and his writers have created an entertaining and fast-paced summer SciFi/Action entertainment. It’s a fascinating work, and it may well help to launch further interest in the whole of Trek. At least, I hope it will. The cast is game (high marks to Karl Urban, whose Leonard McCoy is simply a sterling performance; think McKellen in the Lord of the Rings films- that good), and as a divergent timeline with different historical markers, this Star Trek illustrates a nimble spirit and a firm sense of finding infinite diversities in infinite combinations. It is my sincerest hope that the people driving this franchise avoid the pitfalls of the Rick Berman regime, but even more than that, I want them to tackle some big ideas and get a bit more intellectual.

Nicholas Meyer’s 1982 The Wrath of Khan is always held up as the ‘perfect’ Trek film, and following that example has led us to many different variations on the ‘revenge-seeking X impacts upon a member/members of the crew and the galaxy trembles’ approach (a theme that dominates this new version as well). But Wrath of Khan also deals with the fallout from an “out of sight, out of mind” policy on megalomaniacal warlords as well as questions the value of a device which can generate life from lifelessness (or just as easily wipe out life in the same process). It’s about the conflicts between scientific research and military application. It’s about letting anger burn away at humanity. And this new Trek does a little of that. But its main goal is getting asses in seats, and it’ll do that. I just want some more of what I love about Trek in the next one. And some Deltans.

There are three moments in this new film that are simply breathtaking. The first deals with our immersion into the architecture of Vulcan; the hanging buildings of ShiKahr are simply gorgeous- imaginative and possessed of a truly nonhuman aesthetic. Going further (and building on a great moment in the fourth film), we see the Vulcan educational process, and it’s overwhelming.

The second moment that will reach out and grab you involves a death. I never thought anything could top the horror and shock of the first film’s transporter malfunction, but I would call what happens in this film the single most devastating transporter moment in all of Trek. The first film’s visceral horror, and the absolute Cronenbergian violation of it all, in that transporter malfunction remains unequalled. But there’s a moment in this new film that changes the gears of an entire life. This ‘transporter moment’ is metonymic for what happens around it, on a much grander scale, but there’s a period of about an entire minute where I couldn’t even focus on what was going on because I was trying to keep my shit together from what had just happened.

The third moment just involves the Enterprise rising from the dust of Saturn’s rings, and it makes the heart swell. It’s the grandeur of the shuttle approach from the first film, but only about twenty seconds long. And if the idea of the Starship Enterprise has ever meant anything to you in your life, you can’t help but feel it during that moment. Potential, and decency, and intelligence and justice all working together in a system that spanned worlds and galaxies- that never goes away. So to this new cast of the old Enterprise, I say “Welcome, friends. You’ve got an interesting road ahead of us.”

On a side note: when my Saturday morning press screening was over, some friends and I, leaving the mall, came across two Canadian Geese and three of their goslings, single-file marching from out of the parking lot toward the Mall entrance right by the theatre. Of course, people started gathering around them, taking cell-phone pictures and such, with intrigued children and befuddled shoppers hamstrung by such an incongruous pairing of elements.

This not being Memphis, and this mall not being the Peabody, there was no established protocol.

But, following the lead of the geese, a group of a few folk decided to try and help shepherd the birds back through the parking lot and over to the river several hundred feet away. A diverse group of people with differing goals and no commonalities (other than where they were at the time and an inherent sense for providing help when needed regardless of the fact that they couldn’t communicate verbally with the afflicted) banded together to keep those geese safe. It was like a cosmic message, a Roman omen, adorable with a side of danger, and it made me feel like an idealist for the first time in a while. Trek principles stay with you for life.

Thoughts on David Cronenberg.

This was Uncle Crizzle's idea.

I'm a chatty motherfucker to begin with, and when you bring the films and philosophies of David Cronenberg into the mix, even moreso. But he asked me some questions to help promote a DC double feature going on in Durham last night, and me, always eager for attention, went batshit and wrote back several tomes on the subject.

The edited piece can be found here, and it does a very good job of making me look like someone capable of speaking rationally and with thoughts properly organized, which, as those of you who know me may well attest, is far from the truth.

Many thanks to CDL for talking with me about it.

But now, for shits and giggles, I've decided to post my original complete responses. I do this because I think it's the most concrete illustration of how my mind works that has ever been put down on print this side of my 1992 AP exams. It's rambling, to be sure, but it covers much of where my current fascinations with all things Cronenbergian lie.

Check it out...


CDL: How did you first get into Cronenberg's work?

JS: My first actual encounter with Cronenberg's work was "Faith Healer," an episode he directed of Friday the 13th: The Series. I was and am a big fan of Horror-based TV, but at the time that that show was airing, I had little or no film-based taste or consciousness. But one of the things that I've since learned to love in film and culture is what my colleague Charles Bass calls 'the ironic distance of being Canadian.'

You'd have all of these shows that were geographically vague as to where they were taking place, so theoretically anyone anywhere could assume that what they were witnessing could be as near as the closest metropolis. And they were all made in Canada, with casts and crews that have continued to be part of our global entertainment culture.

There's never an explicit declaration of Canadianness; but because these shows were willing to explore the weird and the political and the sexual and the violent in ways that were, even for twelve year-old me, different from the Mass American culture around me. So I cultivated an appreciation for that aesthetic, which for the Friday the 13th series was initially shaped by several of Cronenberg's longtime collaborators (production design goddess Carol Spier, Editor Ron Sanders, and casting director Deirdre Bowen). I didn't understand this at the time, but having become a Cronenberg devotee, I've since gone back and looked at a lot of the old Canadian-made syndicated shows that I dug, and I've found that throughline.

I first got hardcore into Cronenberg after seeing Crash (on opening day in Tampa, Florida with my Dad). I had gone because of the scandal, because of Holly Hunter, and because I try and support any NC-17 film that looks halfway interesting. Ever since then, his films have always been a part of my life.



CDL: What are your favorites in the Cronenberg canon?

JS: Crash. Naked Lunch. Videodrome. eXistenZ. And, even though I think it's probably his weakest film on the whole, the ideas in Scanners are so amazing that I'll still show it love whenever I can.

The way he reconceives telepathy as a physical interaction between two nervous systems is one of the most radical and astonishing approaches to psychic phenomena that the fantastic has ever produced, and even if it only gets remembered for exploding heads and eyes, what I take away from Scanners is the idea of the Group Scan. When Cameron and Kim are on the run, and they meet up with the scanner underground, there's that moment when all these tormented artists and fugitives find a moment of cosmic peace by flexing their nervous systems and becoming one collective organism (until Revok's men burst in and things start dying).

It's a great concept, and certainly the aspect of the film that distinguishes it from just about every other movie that deals with telepathy- there's always power struggles of some sort, but here, for just a bit, we get a glimpse of an egalitarian cultural evolution, and it's astonishing. Pure fiction, of course, as anyone who's ever tried to get three or four artists to work together on anything will attest. But I still find it inspiring.




CDL: What do you find so appealing about his films?

JS: There is a gleaming amorality in his films that I love. His films take place in an atheistic universe, and I find that representative of modern life. Religion, ideally, should be a personal journey of philosophy and experience, and it's been perverted into a political force- a monolith of oppression. But truthfully, to even the most devout individuals in any society on the earth today, rapid and radical creation from nothingness doesn't trigger thoughts of the Garden of Eden or the Great Flood, it means cancer. When we can't even explain why our bodies do what they do, how could we even hope to extrapolate an abstract belief system completely removed from the physical?

I also like that death means more in a Cronenberg film than in almost any other director working today, and that is specifically due to his atheism. I believe it was in talking about Eastern Promises, he said that when you eliminate the possibility of any sort of afterlife, the act of killing becomes infinitely more shocking and horrifying, and he's absolutely right. So many religious movements and cults are built on the promise of some next life, and horrifying things have been done by individuals who are betting on those same odds. It's horrifying, really. That we have to look to an atheist director to show that kind of respect for life in his work says a lot about the casual acceptance of death that being part of a vaguely-religious society brings with it. Teleology is always an interesting tool with which to approach the world and art.



CDL: The double feature that'll be playing in Durham next Friday is THE DEAD ZONE and THE BROOD. Got anything to say about those?


JS: Well, The Dead Zone is the best Stephen King adaptation ever made. There have been others that work as good films (The Night Flier, Firestarter), and some where great directors have used King's material as a canvas on which to explore their own issues and styles with exciting and entertaining results (Carrie, The Mist, Kubrick's The Shining), and there's even something like Dreamcatcher, which is bugfuck crazy and absolutely true to King in a way that no other adaptation of his work is. But The Dead Zone is a remarkable work.

I love Christopher Walken, and I love when he does that thing he does now. But he is heartbreakingly good in The Dead Zone, and it's the finest performance of his career. And what he and Cronenberg do is prune a lot of frippery away and hone the dark heart of King's novel into something a lot more emotionally bleak and haunting than its source material. This is the first film of Cronenberg's where he began Brundleflying together the source material with his own aesthetic, and even after the decades of SNL skits and Anthony Michael Hall-starring TV show, The Dead Zone holds up better than any other film that came out in 1983. Because of it, there was never a time when I could seriously watch The West Wing without thinking that Josiah Bartlet was going to kill us all.

The Brood was initially a problematic movie for me. When I first viewed it, it seemed to have a primal streak of misogyny laced through it, as well as a nihilism that didn't really seem tonally right to me. I can't say that something just clicked for me one day, or that reading up on the circumstances behind the film's making made things fit into place, and that I immediately realized the film's brilliance. But I've grown to love it.

It's an angry film; Cronenberg made it coming off of a vicious divorce as well as in response to the manufactured bullshit of Kramer vs Kramer, and each time I watch it I notice something new. The whole subplot about Psychoplasmics is remarkably ahead of its time, and I would love to see Cronenberg make a movie about the narcotizing of the Western World. Do we even have a universal human biochemistry any more? But I digress…

The Brood is one of the best films about divorce ever made- it's like the splatter movie equivalent of Abba's album The Visitors, where the emotional pain of an imploding relationship alters a recognized aesthetic in a way that marks it as different. And the way it illustrates how patterns of abuse spread outward through families and relationships, even removed from the visceral wrench of the film itself, is patently devastating. I also love how it addresses the schizophrenic nature of a children; the line between sweet-faced hope for the future and mallet-wielding assassins of potential is so much finer than society wants to admit. And that's the key to what makes Cronenberg great- he admits it. His films tell us things that we know on a cellular level, and he's unafraid to lock lens on the abyss for a little while.

A Cronenberg double feature on the big screen is a remarkable occasion, not to be missed or taken lightly. I'm envious of Durham's moviegoers, and would be making the trek myself were it not for a friend's wedding. Perhaps a DVD of The Brood would make an appropriate gift?



CDL: Were you as offended as I was when people started saying that A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE was the greatest thing he's ever done, after all the subversive films he has made over the years?

JS: A History of Violence is a great film, but I think the reason why it got such a rapturous response was because it felt like it could be a regular movie. There were traditional elements that any moviegoer could tap into and find some commonality with, and it made it a much easier film to like than many of his others. I've since made it my default film for introducing others to the world of Cronenberg.

I mean, even Eastern Promises is a damned weird film when you get down to it, structured almost as a seduction. It's almost impossible to even evaluate it as a film and experience until after it's over and you realize how every minor point and moment has been set up to facilitate a transition on the individual (the character of Nikolai) and cultural (Russia as an entity) levels. Eastern Promises is like one of the Dune books in that respect.


-and, as a special bonus-

JS: You don't have to take drugs to enjoy a Cronenberg film, because his films, at their best, provide all the benefits of the best hallucinogens. 'Reality' and social institutions are sloughed off, and one's experience is first and foremost that of a biological organism. The flesh is both Absolute and in flux, and all terror resolves into terror of the body. But there's an emotional purity to his work that I don't think anyone can touch. The Fly remains the most beautiful love story ever put on screen, Naked Lunch says more to me about writing than any other film on the subject, and Spider was the film that let me finally get some peace with regard to a schizophrenic Great Aunt who had died several years before. Nobody does better DVD commentaries about their films (though I would put Paul Verhoeven and John Waters just behind him), and there are very few directors whom I will put as much trust in. There simply is no finer artist working in film today.